[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a Letter to the Editor, written and submitted by a verified resident. It represents the opinion of the author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of South King Media or its staff.]
What is the purpose of a 26 ft high ADU (aka “mother in law”) with 1000 sq ft of living space on the first floor, and another 1000 sq ft of storage space right above it on the second floor? No staircase to the second floor, just a hatch? A windowless second floor with a full-blown dormer?
That is just what I asked myself when a neighbor built exactly that ADU in a recently bought lot. The biggest house in our long block by overall size, yet the smallest one in terms of livable space. A massive and odd mix between a house and a warehouse towering over the original house in the lot and the backyards around it. Something didn’t make sense.
Two years ago King County approved the 2024 Comprehensive Plan which, among other things, has the goal to promote building to alleviate the housing affordability experienced in our county. The new building ordinance approved by the City of Burien in 2025 (Ordinance No. 868) is a follow-up to this plan, a document that helps define how our city will grow, including the criteria and limitations of the ADUs built here.
My first reaction to the newly built ADU, as most of the neighbors around it, was “this can’t be legal”. So several of us contacted different staff and council members in the city, who were very helpful and took the time to listen and explain everything in detail. To my surprise, their reply was consistent and along these lines: It is legal, since it doesn’t go over the 1000 sq ft of occupied (living) space, and it doesn’t go over the 35 ft height limit for our R-2 zone.
This is a loophole that needs to be corrected. Every regulation that is approved by a government entity has a purpose. One of the main purposes of the King County 2024 Comprehensive Plan and the Burien Ordinance No. 868 is to alleviate housing affordability in our area. Following up on King County, the planners at the City of Burien have taken steps to promote the construction of new ADUs, but in their eagerness to build they have shown poor foresight and expertise, overlooking an important factor when putting into writing the Ordinance: Height.
As aforementioned, right now the height limit for any residential building in our zone, both single-family and multi-family buildings, is 35 ft high. Just to put this in perspective, 35 ft is the usual height of a 3 story building. Based on this, our neighbors could have built another 3rd floor with additional 1000 sq ft of storage on their new ADU, and as long as it didn’t surpass 35 ft of height, it would have been legal. This is a single-family unit that has two bedrooms, so it will probably accommodate a couple without children, or a family of 4 at the most; 3 stories for that. The purpose of Ordinance No. 868 would have been accomplished exactly the same if the height had been of just one floor capped at, for example, 18 ft high. By doing a quick search, I found out that Burien has the most generous height limit for any ADU in the cities around us that I checked: Bellevue, 15 ft; Renton, 18 ft (exceptional cases up to 24 ft); Normandy Park, 25 ft; Seattle, 32 ft. Since the limit for occupied space in an ADU is 1000 sq ft, Burien single-family ADU height limit of 35 ft brings no improvement to the purpose of alleviating our housing affordability, the real need here, and has clear negative outcomes: visual impacts, overuse of much needed forest resources, and attracting developers with obscure reasons to build one floor (or two) with one thousand (or two thousand) sq ft of storage above the living space: What will happen in the upper floors of this type of ADUs once the final permits are granted?
Burien is going to grow. Do we want to grow wisely, or uglily, squanderily, and sketchily? Our city ordinances are the key.
– Fabiån Caño
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